Life's a Beautiful Thing
by through-the-eye-of-a-needle
Summary: The end came, as all ends do, just not in the way anyone expected. A love story on the wrong side of enemy lines.
1. Summer 1917

**Part I. **

**Summer, 1917**

She remembers an explosion. Falling. Heat scorching her face and sticky liquid trickling down her cheek, soaking into her dress. There are screams.

"Flora!" Kitty's dark eyes appear above her own, her hair falling out from behind it headdress. Orange light sparkles through it like a halo. "Flora, can you hear me?"

She tries to form words, but she can't quite move her mouth. Kitty's face is growing blurry around the edges, and then another shadow joins her, another pair of dark eyes and there's a curious weight on her chest and why can't she breathe?

"We need to get her to theatre," the other-shadow-that-is-not-Kitty says. Flora knows the voice, she knows it, but her mind is going blank. Sleep beckons with welcoming arms.

"Flora, don't you dare shut your eyes, you mustn't shut your eyes, hear me? Don't you dare. Stay with us, please stay with us." Kitty's voice echoes as though she's calling from the end of a long, long tunnel.

Then there are footsteps running, and gentle arms lifting her and pain spears through her side and pain and pain and pain and then she's falling again, spiralling down into a darkness that is studded with stars.

* * *

She hears sounds long before her eyes open, the murmur of voices from afar and people talking near her feet. Where is she? Why is she here?

Well, she can't stay. She's got rounds to do, patients to see; there's no time to waste. The newer, greener VADs who arrived with the springtime need her to tell them what to do, they need her to help them.

"It looks as if hospitals are now fair game to the bloody Jerry. Are the men they kill on the battlefields not enough? Do they have to wound our nurses too?" The unfamiliar male voice is angry, loud.

"You must be quieter, Roland, you'll wake her." That is Matron, and Flora feels a small amount of comfort in the recognition.

"How can they do this, Grace? We're clearly marked with Red Crosses and this is the fifth air raid in as many nights! The Red Cross is bloody off-limits, they _know _that!"

There is a long moment of silence, and Flora struggles against the glue holding her eyelids shut.

Then the male voice speaks again, softer this time, resigned. "How are the others?"

"Several have died. The operating tent was not hit, but the mess will need repairs."

"Bloody hell."

"Colonel Purbright is coming. He's arriving this afternoon."

"I'll be in my office."

"Yes, sir."

There is flapping of canvas, the murmuring dying down. Weariness tugs at her with insistent hands and she lets herself fall.

* * *

The next time she surfaces, the glue is gone from her eyelashes and they flutter open like butterfly wings.

"Nurse, she's waking up!" Someone calls. Someone, someone – it's one of the younger VADs – Elizabeth someone or other, the one with the completely unpronounceable last name.

More footsteps and a rustle of skirts. Then a blurry shape is bending over her, clasping her hand. She blinks, and the shape swims into focus. "Kitty." She tries to speak, but all that comes out is a croak.

Kitty laughs tearfully, squeezing her hand. "Hello, Flora. It's good to see your eyes."

"Water," Flora manages.

"Yes, I know. I'll get some. Cholmoudery, fetch Captain Hesketh-Thorne, then Matron. Go, now, as quick as you can."

"Yes, Nurse," Elizabeth says.

Kitty turns, and then a cool rim of china is being held to her lips, water dribbling into her parched mouth like rain into a baking desert. When she is finished drinking, and Kitty takes the mug away, Flora tries to shift, to see how much pain there is when she does.

"Don't try to move," Kitty admonishes. "You'll only make it worse."

"What happened?" Her voice is stronger now, fuelled by the water and a desire to know.

Kitty looks uncertain, nibbling on her lower lip like she always does when debating what to do. "I really shouldn't…"

"Since when have you cared about rules? Please, Kitty. _Please._"

"The Germans bombed the hospital again," Kitty gives in. "You were on night duty. A bomb fell on the other end of the ward, sent jagged pieces flying and set the tent on fire. You were hit."

The shock hits Flora like a punch. The boys she'd been nursing, the ones she'd joked with and told off for flirting though secretly she was rather pleased with the attention, they were gone. No chance at getting better from their wounds, just gone, just like that. "How bad am I?" Flora asks, trying to keep the tremor from her words.

"Flora, I can't say. Not until Captain Hesketh-Thorne gets here."

"I heard my name." The flap dividing the room from what Flora presumes as the rest of the ward opens and the man himself ducks in, a clipboard tucked under his arm. He stops at the end of Flora's bed, smiling. "Nurse Marshall, it's good to see you awake. How are you feeling?"

"Alright, I suppose," Flora says. He reads the lie in her expression.

"Nurse Trevelyan, if you would be so kind as to fetch another half-gram of morphine."

"Yes, Captain," Kitty says, standing and clasping Flora's hand again for a second. It's funny how Kitty addresses him so formally when Flora knows that off-duty, the Captain and Kitty are rather good friends. The canvas flap rustles and Flora closes her eyes for a second. When she opens them again, Matron is standing at the bottom of the bed alongside Captain Hesketh-Thorne.

Matron has never liked Flora, but now her expression is gentle instead of the usual steel-tipped glance. "How are you feeling, Marshall?"

"Nurse Trevelyan is fetching more morphine," Captain Hesketh-Thorne answers for her, saving Flora from speaking.

"Good," Matron says. "We'd better have a look at these wounds then, hadn't we? Cholmoudery, help Nurse Marshall onto her side would you?"

Flora bites her lip hard to keep from crying out as Elizabeth slowly rolls her over, propping her up on a pillow. She squeezes her eyes shut against the tears as careful, cool hands probe at the wound. She knows she should be embarrassed by being examined like this, but she can't bring herself to care with the pain and the pain and the pain…

It feels like hours until she is returned to lying on her back and the pain is receding like a wave. Captain Hesketh-Thorne is scribbling on his clipboard.

"How bad is it?" She breaks the quieting hush.

The Captain and Matron exchange a look, and she swallows. That's the expression Captain Hesketh-Thorne always wears when he has to deliver bad news; God knows how many of her patients have been the subject of it before.

"The wound in your side caused by a flying piece of the bomb is not infected, which is good. But there was severe internal bleeding, and whilst I _think _I patched it all up, you will need a specialist's examination and a long convalescence."

The implications of his words sink in and panic rises in Flora like a flood. "I-I can't! I can't go home to England, there's convoys arriving every day, you need me here – please don't send me away, please…"

Matron leans over to take her hand. "Calm yourself, Nurse Marshall."

"Please don't send me away," Flora whispers. This is her home, now, it's been her home for two long, gruelling years but she wouldn't leave it for the world.

"I'm afraid we must. There aren't the facilities here for an injured nurse. Go home, get better and perhaps you will be able to return."

Flora blinks several times and nods shakily. There's no point arguing with Matron – there never has been, she's as unmovable as a rock – and there's no point starting now.

Then Kitty's back with the morphine and she's sinking into sleep like a stone into a pool, her thoughts rippling out into nothingness.

* * *

A week later Kitty is tucking blankets around Flora's stretcher for the ambulance ride to Boulogne harbour. She was pronounced fit enough for travel two days ago, and people have been poking their heads in to say goodbye ever since. Corporal Foley. Sister Quayle even though Flora still can't bring herself to like the woman, the Cook, several patients that she nursed who are due back up the line soon.

And now it's just her and Kitty, the woman who's been like a sister ever since they arrived and Flora was new and green and silly.

"I'll miss you," Flora says quietly as Kitty steps back from the stretcher. Tears glimmer in her dark eyes like rain.

"I'll miss you too. Give my regards if you see Rosalie in one of the Blighty Hospitals, or if you see Tom in Boulogne. His casualty clearing station's up near there for a week."

"I will," Flora manages a nod. "Promise that you'll write?"

"Promise," Kitty says. "Promise that you won't run before you can walk and make that wound any worse?"

"Promise," Flora whispers. Two orderlies come into the little room on the end of the ward and lift her stretcher easily between them, carrying her down the ward.

"Bye, Nurse!" Men call from either side, and tears begin to prick at her own eyes like needles. Then she's being loaded into the ambulance; it's only her and two nurses who are taking home-leave as it's not proper for her to be with all the men. Captain Hesketh-Thorne appears taking her hand for a second and raising it to his lips as though she is a proper lady back in London, like she was going to be before the war started. "Stay safe, Nurse Marshall, and get better soon. The hospital will seem positively ghostly without your chatter."

"Thank you, Captain," Flora says before the two nurses climb in beside her and the gate is slammed and bolted.

As the ambulance moves off she can hear them all shouting. "Goodbye! Goodbye!" She sobs quietly like the wind soughing through the trees, and a terrible, lonely foreboding feeling hits like the explosion that put her here in the first place.

When she sees them again, the world will have changed, dramatically, irrevocably, and not for the better.

* * *

**A/N **This is a new, three-part story dedicated to two of my friends. Enjoy.


	2. Summer 1918

**Part II. **

**Summer 1918**

The air is hot, and no birds sing. Flora Marshall silently lays out the body of a young man, his eyes forever closed by a bullet in his stomach that began to fester. The bloody bandages lies in a bucket at her feet as she straightens his uniform, covers his cold, still body with a Union Jack that was left behind by the retreating army. There are no orderlies to help her, no priest standing vigil. Just her, all alone with the silence smothering like a shroud.

At some point she'll have to ask Ned, the old handyman to dig another grave in the cemetery at the bottom of the garden, but today he's gone out to one of the abandoned, local farms to see if he can scrounge any more supplies. She wonders how much luck he'll have.

As she descends the stairs, her footsteps muffled on the soft burgundy carpet and the old bucket swinging from her fingers, she hears the sound of horses and the thrum of car engines, throbbing against the silence.

It is inevitable. It was always going to happen.

Sighing, she straightens her uniform and the Red Cross on her sleeve and goes into the ward in the drawing room. Only one man is awake; the rest are sleeping, silent and frighteningly still or labouring for breath.

"Are they here, Nurse?" the man asks weakly. Blood stains the bandages wrapped around his head.

"Yes," she says as she passes him. His hand flashes out, grips her slender wrist.

"Don't let them hurt me, Nurse, don't let the filthy Jerry touch me!"

"Johnny, hush," she says firmly, prising his fingers off. "No-one is going to hurt you."

He subsides against the pillow, muttering restlessly. Sometimes, he's almost normal but then the fear and the brain-damage reveal themselves like monsters under the bed and he's back to the mumbling mess he was when they brought him in.

The sound of engines and the clip-clop of horses cut off abruptly. Flora puts her bucket down at the entrance to what used to be the parlour - now converted to a laundry to save her the trek of going to the outbuildings whenever dressing needed changing – and steps into the entrance hall.

There is a loud knock at the door, which resonates hollowly into the arched ceiling. When she was here as a child, or more recently as a convalescent before she returned to nursing, a woman would have never presumed to open the front door – that was the butler's job. But there is no butler now – merely her, Ned and Mrs Wheeldon the cook who is out in the kitchen-garden digging up carrots.

Flora draws back the bolt and heaves open the ancient oak door. Her first impression is 'tall.' And then an incoherent stream of what she supposes must be German. Making sure her whole body is blocking the doorway, she says loudly, "I don't speak German."

The man in front of her, an officer she presumes, stops and narrows his eyes at her and the Red Cross on the sleeve of her blue and white uniform. Evidently, they were expecting to find this building empty. He looks over his shoulder and barks a short, sharp order at the men clustered on the lower steps, and an older, rounder man climbs to stand next to his officer. There is silver creeping up his black beard.

"I speak English," he says, his accent thick. "Oberst Adler wishes to know who you are."

"Nurse Marshall, Matron of No. 23 Hospital at Penshurst." She has made up the bit about being a Matron, but if it will make her more important in the eyes of these Germans then it is worth a try. She hopes that the lie doesn't show on her face, but her fears are stupid, really. She's had to learn to lie, to tell a dying man that of course he'll see his loved ones again, to tell a double-amputee that yes, he will walk. And in any case, it's not as though the real Matron is here to object. She left with everyone else when the news reached them that the Germans had taken Dover.

The round man has translated and the giant of an officer – Oberst Adler – says something else. The round man manages to look apologetic. "We have orders to commission this house as a hospital for our men."

Flora cannot refuse – her parting orders from the real Matron were to co-operate as much as possible, wait until the dying men under her care have passed on and make for the safety of home lines as quickly as possible. She steps backwards, her heels clicking on the flagstoned floor. "I have twelve men here," she says sternly as the Germans begin to file in. "I will help if you have need of me, but otherwise I expect to be left to my work unhindered."

Another translation, and Oberst Adler looks half-amused, half-irritated at being ordered around by a tiny slip of a girl like herself. But the consent comes, and relief fills her like a dry well in autumn. She knows the Germans aren't the barbarians everyone seems to think they are – they're people, just like the Allies. They don't eat children for breakfast like some monster in a fairytale.

She stands to one side with her hands demurely clasped in front of her as she has seen other Matrons do as the German officer paces up and down the hall, looking around him appreciatively. After a few seconds, he stops and barks something else.

The short round man comes to stand beside her. "I am Lieutenant Nadel," he tells her. "Oberst Adler wishes you to know that we are here to set up today, our other doctors and the nurses arrive tomorrow and a convoy will follow shortly after. How many staff do you have under your command, Matron?"

"I am afraid it's just me, the cook and our handyman. But we will endeavour to help as much as possible."

Nadel shakes his head. "I know I was expecting more resistance than this. You are co-operating more than we thought any English person would."

Flora raises her eyebrows. "Aren't we working towards the same objective, Lieutenant? I may be English and you German, but I am a nurse and you a soldier of the Medical Corps. We do the same job; putting wounded men back together - it is only nationality that has put us behind opposing lines until now."

"Well spoken, Matron." Nadel nods admiringly, before glancing over at his commanding officer. "I believe we must begin – if you could show us the way around?"

* * *

It takes some getting used to – having a translator – but by the end of the tour around the house, Flora can sense that Nadel has warmed to her and the Oberst_ – _a colonel, she discovers – is thawing enough to grudgingly accept that she knows best in these circumstances.

By the next morning, Flora has reconciled herself to having the Germans here and after a heated argument with Mrs Wheeldon who stayed to 'look after the young missus,' the older woman caves as well. Ned is ambivalent to their foreign occupation and continues to potter around like a beetle, taking no notice of them as long as they leave him alone.

At eleven, after her dressings round which was curiously watched by several orderlies who seemed bizarrely surprised to see that the British way of treating wounds is almost identical to the German way, she stands on the front steps, waiting to greet the incoming German staff alongside Oberst Adler.

And they come. Slow and steady, a train of trucks and carts carrying people and supplies, the wheels crunching on the gravel of the drive. Several loads of iron-regulation hospital beds arrived yesterday, and for once in the whole length of the war, Flora wasn't expected to make them. As 'Matron' she was permitted to stand, watch and direct through gestures and simple words as the Germans set up their hospital.

Her men are allowed to stay where they are as anyone can see that they are dying. Then the parlour has been changed into another ward and the laundry moved outside. The dining room has been kept as a mess, and Mrs Wheeldon's kitchen taken over, though the woman herself is allowed to stay in charge for the moment. The library is for intensives, tents have been set up on the lawns for less serious cases, an operating tent is in the works and a quartermaster's store is being built.

It's glorious to see life returning to the ghost-house she's been inhabiting for weeks on end, even if the laughter and jokes are in the wrong language.

The train of vehicles draws to a halt in the turning circle, and people begin to assemble at the foot of the stairs. An older woman in a cape, stiff headdress and smart starched uniform climbs the steps with a gaggle of nurses behind her. This must be the German Matron…nerves roil in Flora's stomach, but she forces herself to hold her head high and adopt the distant, haughty look that Matron Carter at her first hospital always wore.

The older woman and Oberst Adler exchange a few words, and Flora catches 'Oberschwester,' which she understands to be Matron and 'Englisch.' The German Matron regards her imperiously for a second, before ordering the nurses inside and taking her place on the other side of OberstAdler.

For several minutes, Flora has the uncomfortable feeling of knowing she's being talked about, but not understanding a word of what is being said, so she pretends that she can't hear and pulls herself up to her full height.

A group of twenty-or-so men appear from inside the trucks in smart grey uniforms, talking as they come up the steps and then Flora's heart stops beating in her chest.

Following them, flanked by two stern-faced, grey-clad soldiers is a man dressed in the khaki she's so used to. Short, dark hair, standing straight though the permanent air of charm he always used to wear like a cloak has been worn away – Flora would recognise him anywhere.

His eyes meet hers, and for a sudden moment he looks as stunned as she feels.

Oberst Adler says something to his guards and they step away, go to join the others busily unloading more equipment from the trucks and carrying it up into the house or around the sides to where more tents are being set up by the contingent that arrived yesterday.

Nadel's voice sounds from behind Flora's left shoulder. "This is our English prisoner, Thorne. He's a very good surgeon, so the officers decided he should come with us to England instead of staying in one of the camps."

"Well," Flora manages a tone of nonchalance as the Oberst, Matron and prisoner turn back into the house. "It shall be pleasant to have another English person around. Excuse me, I must get on with my rounds."

As she enters the great entrance hall behind the others, there comes a sharp scream from the drawing-room that pierces her ears like a knife. "Nurse, I'm hemming!"

Flora bolts, pushing past the Germans and into the drawing room, where one of the previously-sleeping men is screaming at the blood soaking into his sheets. "It's alright, calm," she says, yanking the sheets back. A crimson tide spouts from behind the bandages on his leg, and she finds the femoral pressure point like she's been taught, presses down on it as hard as she can.

Then there's another person leaning over the other side of the bed, _him,_ ripping up the bloodied sheets to make into a tourniquet. He works quickly and silently, tying the tourniquet as tightly as he can, but already the colour is receding from the man's face and grey is advancing like an invading army. The patient is still.

The German guards have followed _him _into the room, and now they take his arms, push him away towards the door and leave her standing there like a statue, cold and still until two orderlies gently guide her away from the bed. "We lay him," one of them says haltingly, and she nods numbly, steps away.

She's seen so many men die, now, but the horror doesn't decrease whether it is the first man or the thousandth. It was German guns that did this to the dead man lying in the hospital bed, and the thought of them helping to bury him makes her head spin.

When the orderlies have borne him away covered in blankets, she mechanically strips the bed. Johnny is muttering to himself in his corner. The rest slumber on, their bodies slowly closing down, disintegrating into dust as they sleep. With the pile of bloodied linen in her arms, she begins to walk towards the outbuilding the Germans have designated as the laundry, but one of the young German nurses stops her, takes the pile of white and red from her arms, shaking her head. "I do," she says. "I do."

Flora nods, and takes a deep breath.

A minute. It has only been a minute. How can a person die in barely a minute? How can a world be turned upside down by one single glance?

* * *

It takes several weeks to be able to bump into him. The convoys start arriving, and as her own patients die, one by one, she begins to help more with the German hospital. The Oberschwester watches her suspiciously as she tends to German soldiers, standing out like a sore thumb in her pale blue uniform, hard green eyes following her every move like a hawk.

Eventually, though, the Oberschwester finds she has better things to do with her time than to constantly supervise Flora, and with the weight of constantly being observed lifted from her back, Flora begins to think about how she will ever talk to _him _alone.

But when it happens, it is quite by accident.

She is stacking linen in the cupboard – not a particularly 'Matronly' job, but it has to be done – when the door opens suddenly, and the tower of starched, white sheets which she was balancing against a shelf slip and crash to the floor like oversized, graceless snowflakes.

She looks over her shoulder, and there he is, clipboard in hand and sans guards. They stare at each other for a few seconds, then he quickly steps inside and shuts the door. The silence is choking her. "Captain Hesketh-Thorne," she says.

"Nurse Marshall," he replies, his eyes trained on her face. She forces herself not to blush under his gaze. "How are you here?"

The words hang in the air between them like a ghost, and she shrugs, just one shoulder like Kitty used to do. "This was my aunt's house. When I got better, I returned to nursing and well…they needed someone to stay behind with the dying."

"But why you?" he asks as though the words are painful. "Why did you have to stay here – you could be safe behind the British lines yet…"

"No-one else wanted to. I'm not scared of the Germans, I'm really not, and well…my aunt took a lot of persuading and they made me promise to get away as soon as possible, but two of my patients are still hanging on and I have to stay." She pauses, unsure. "They said that you are a prisoner."

He looks away for a second. "The German line advanced. We only had enough warning to evacuate the wounded and the nurses before they were at the gates, taking us all prisoner. I was in a camp, for a while, but when they invaded England some of their surgeons in frontline aid posts were killed. They needed more of us, and so…" He trails off, and then they're looking at each other again. Flora doesn't know why she feels so breathless.

"It's good to see someone else I know," she says, finally. "It's good."

"Yes," he says. "Yes, I know."

After that, it comes slowly, then very fast. When she asked Kitty about being in love, the older woman had smiled and said it's like having your throat cut, just that quickly. But the young, naïve Flora of the past had thought that too unromantic, and formed her own opinions, that falling in love must be like a song, gentle and sweet.

But Kitty is right, as Kitty was usually right back then. It's quick, and fast, and like a kind of hunger that she cannot shake. She doesn't know whether it's because they knew each other from the time before the invasion, or whether it's because she's starved of smiles across the room, and secret looks that burn deep into her chest. She doesn't even know if she's dreaming, and she'll wake up to find that the war never happened, and the invasion never happened and that it is all a figment of her imagination.

He is almost constantly flanked by at least one of his guards, but when there is a complicated operation, or they are needed to set up new tents on the edges of the South Lawn, he and Flora manage to bump into each other in the linen closet, or in the supply room which used to store china decorated with fragile, baby's breath rosebuds and now holds syringes and barrels of antiseptic solution. They talk, softly, hushed, about anything and everything but the war and the battle for London, hold hands sometimes, taking comfort in the warmth of someone-who-is-not-an-enemy.

But then things begin to happen.

It's long past the time when the last of Flora's patients have passed into God's hands, but still no thought of running back to the safety of home lines has crossed her thoughts. She helps out with the German hospital, changing the dressings of young men with a bright smile on her face and begging German phrases off of some of the younger, friendlier nurses. She does inventories and supervises mealtimes for the worst of the wounded, whilst thoughts of _him _and the-enemy-who-are-not-the-enemy wind around and around in her head like twisted snakes.

The first thing she knows of it are the German nurses avoiding her look, and turning their faces away as she passes in the corridor. Oberschwester hovers over her shoulder more like a malevolent guardian angel. People's glares arc across the air like icicles, piercing her between her ribs because she doesn't know the cause for this sudden, freezing hostility.

Eventually, she corners Nadel, for even though several of the nurses and orderlies have a decent command of English, he is still the one who makes the most sense.

"Why is everyone acting strangely?" she demands of him one morning as she begins to unwind the dressings of an unconscious patient. More and more, the paperwork is being given to the Oberschwester, and her work is becoming more like that of a nurse than of the Matron she was pretending to be.

He looks uncomfortable, and tries to walk away, but he has the patient's clipboard in his hands and he needs to look at the wound that Flora is carefully un-bandaging. It is weeping tears of pus and blood.

"No-one is acting strangely," he says.

She raises her eyebrows. "Do you really think I was born yesterday, Lieutenant?"

"There have been some…incidents concerning the prisoner. You do not need to worry yourself, Matron."

"Incidents? Like what?" She curses the words the second they are out of her mouth – she would have done better keeping up a pretence of boredom, and finding Miles later to ask.

"I have orders not to discuss," he murmurs. "Make sure you wash this wound three times a day in the antiseptic."

She starts to bristle at being brushed off like a little girl poking her nose into business that doesn't concern her, but forces herself to take a breath and calm down. "Of course," she says.

* * *

Later that week, she manages to wrangle Miles' whereabouts from Mrs Wheeldon, and, escaping Oberschwester's gimlet falcon-like stare for her lunch hour, makes her way up the back staircase that is rarely used by any of the staff. She carries a tray in her hands, a bowl of potato soup made from the potatoes dug early from the dark, sticky earth and an apple from the orchard. Bread is hard to come by, now, so it's only for senior staff. Luckily, she still counts as senior even though she is slowly being shuffled to one side like an unwanted toy and her ration of bread is hidden in the pocket of her uniform.

On the almost-deserted East Wing, a bored-looking orderly sits in a chair outside of one of the rooms, his legs folded out in front of him. "Lunch," she says, endeavouring to make her tone as bored as possible.

He nods as if he understands her, and unlocks the door. "I take."

"No," she bites out. "I will. I need to speak to the prisoner."

He reads something in her expression and sighs. There is a strange sympathy in his eyes. "Ten minutes."

"Thank you," she says, and then the door is opening and she's inside. It shuts with the sound of wood dragging across the carpet and a muffled thump.

Miles stands by the bay window, his hands in his pockets and turns at her entrance.

"I brought you lunch," she says, setting it on the bedside table. This is the room she used to stay in when she was too big to be in the nursery with the little ones and too small to have a proper adult room in the South Wing. She remembers the gold leaf on the ceiling and walls, the blue counterpane, the drapes hanging from the bed that always made her feel like a princess.

"Thank you."

She can contain herself no longer, and the words burst out in a torrent of emotion. They only have ten minutes. "Why are you locked in here and not out doing operations? They won't tell me anything and…"

"Ssh," he says, quickly, stepping across the room to her. "Ssh, Flora, don't be so loud."

"Tell me."

He takes her hand, winding his fingers through hers absently. She tries to take comfort from the warmth of his hand, but his being locked in here means nothing good. "Some of my operations went wrong. Badly wrong. They think that it is sabotage. They think that I'm out to kill as many of their men as possible, and that you're an accomplice."

"What?" This is worse than she ever imagined. "What do you mean?"

"My court martial is next week. I'm telling them that you had nothing to do with it, that you were only doing your job as a nurse because you couldn't get back to your own side…"

"I won't let you."

"Flora…"

"No. I'm not letting you go before a court martial and tell them lies! They'll shoot you!"

"What other choice do I have?" he asks. "What else can I do? There is no way they are hurting you whilst I still breathe…"

"I'm getting you out," she says.

"No, Flora, it's too dangerous."

"It's not dangerous. You forget that I spent the good part of my childhood roaming these halls – I know ways that they don't."

"Don't do this, Flora."

"I have to. I am not letting you get killed because they can't see that everyone makes mistakes sometimes."

There are tears in her ears, dripping like water from a tree and for a second he wraps his arms around her, holding her close. "I can't let you."

"You can," she says. "And you will."

Then the ten minutes is up, and they step apart from each other as the door opens and she is ushered out. "I will bring him his dinner," she tells the orderly coldly.

He looks at her for a second. "Take care, Matron. Take care."

* * *

After that, all of her waking moments are dedicated to getting him out. She stockpiles her rations. Bread, apples, anything that she can find or beg off Mrs Wheeldon who, although she runs the kitchens perfectly, is also under suspicion, and sneaks it away into the woods via Ned the handyman who with his slow beetling gait is the only English person to be trusted. They think that he is too old to be part of this fictitious plot they have created.

She lies in bed at night, and thinks about ways of getting Miles out. Unless she can get the orderly on her side, then her chances seem pretty much hopeless…until she remembers the secret door.

And then all her plans fall into place.

* * *

The day before the court martial, she once again brings him dinner and the orderly, used to her coming and going instead of the lowly volunteer who performed this task before, allows her fifteen minutes to talk as 'the prisoner goes soon.'

As soon as the door shuts, Flora takes Miles' hand firmly. "Come on," she whispers.

She finds the catch, hidden among the gold-leaf on the walls and presses down hard, and a section of the painted panelling swivels around. Tunnel walls with fresh air swooshing through appear as if by magic. She leads him out onto the battlements that no-one ever uses now, crouching along to the old spiral staircase that she used to play on as a child, convinced that it was the perfect place for a romantic tryst. And once inside the shelter of the walls, she turns to him. "You know what to do, where to go, where the food is?" she asks.

"Yes," he says. "Yes, I do."

"Promise me you won't look back, you won't come back."

"Promise me that you'll follow as soon as you can." His hands grip hers, fingers locking around her wrists like he could drag her with him to safety.

She stares at him, blinking back tears. The war and the invasion have forced her to grow up, to leave the silly, spoilt girl that she was behind and become a woman who takes everything that life has to offer because she knows it won't come round again.

So she gives him her answer. There in the scant protection of a falling-down tower with pale gold light blazing through the arrow-slit, she kisses him and holds him close, winding her fingers through his short dark hair and letting his lips move against hers in a gentle tenderness that feels just like falling.

And then he's gone, down the steps and she's letting herself back into the room, pulling the piece of cloth soaked in ether from her pocket and putting it over face. As the drug begins to take effect, she wonders if she'll ever see him again.

* * *

**A/N **Here's the next part - thank you for the reviews! By the way, Oberst is Colonel in German, and Oberschwester is Matron.


	3. Spring 1919

**Part III.**

**Spring 1919**

It is night, and still Flora Marshall remains on her knees, scrubbing blood out of bandages to the sound of owls swooping down on unfortunate prey cowering in the grass. The cracks in her fingers are sore, and her dress hangs loose around her thin, tired frame. Once in this house, the light blue was a sign of the English Matron, but now it is the faded colour of a maid-of-all-work. Up before dawn, to bed after midnight. This is how she lives, now, a world away from the time before the war, before the invasion, before _his _escape.

The worst thing is that she doesn't know whether he even made it to the British lines. He could be lying dead somewhere, shot by a German patrol, and she would never know.

She dips the bandages in the antiseptic solution and takes them outside, begins to hang them from the lines that arc between the trees, thinking over and over again how she could have contrived to follow him.

When she had woken up from the ether a lifetime ago, they had been standing over her, demanding to know where the prisoner was. She had tried to give the concocted story to Nadel, that she had been bringing the prisoner dinner and that he had knocked her out using the rag soaked in ether and escaped, but they had not believed her.

After a disciplinary hearing where she understood nothing at all, her rank of 'English Matron' was stripped from her, and in a single moment, she was demoted to being the dogsbody that everyone used to for chores they didn't want to do. She cleaned and rolled bandages, scrubbed floors, did the general laundry alongside the laundry-women who had come with the army and refused to speak to her, did every undesirable task that was forced upon her.

She had managed, to start with, but now the lack of sleep and the constant work are chafing at her spirit and eating at her soul, draining her of the way she used to be.

And now she is pinning out the last of the bandages, and lights still burn in the officers' mess. The war is going badly for them, she knows that now. Barely a year on English soil, and they are losing ground, being pushed back from London. The big guns that only used to be a rumble in the distance are more distinct, their orange-and-yellow flashes lighting up the night sky as shells rain death on the soldiers huddling into trenches.

She knows that the German line is retreating, and that the hospital will soon be gone. They've already started evacuating the wounded back to Germany. Tents are going down, beds are being packed up, and there is less and less work for her to do as no-one particularly cares whether the floors are gleaming or not.

As the weeks pass, the hospital dwindles, more tents disappearing as if they are the subject of a magician's conjuring trick, more convoys leaving than arriving. Oberschwester still orders Flora about as though she is the queen of the land, but there is a strained tiredness to the skin around her green eyes and she is more likely to be distracted by loading men into ambulances and supervising the dismantling of beds.

By the middle of summer, there are only a few dying cases left. The guns move ever closer, the army is on the retreat.

And Flora makes her move.

One night, after gathering her blanket, a canteen of water and what little food there is left from the kitchen, she steals away into the cloak of the night like a thief, not looking over her shoulder. And then, she walks. She knows that she has to go north, and she knows the villages that lie north, but she doesn't dare go by road because of the fleeing army.

So she fights a path through the woods, brambles tearing holes in her dress and her legs with their grasping fingers, trees looming up out of a darkness that is so complete she could drown in it. The guns boom, closer and closer, the shock waves of shells landing making her whole body tremble.

The night seems endless, but eventually day dawns, pale light arrowing through the emerald tree-tops, and life, regardless of the war, emerges. Squirrels run up and down trunks. Deer move stealthily at a distance like shadows. Birds caw from their roosts high in the leaves.

The noise of the guns slows throughout that day as she continues northwards, the shells falling less and less regularly. The woods grow quieter, greyer, branches fallen down and the shattered remains of shells, blood-stained metal scattered among the scrub.

By the time she reaches the edge of the dying wood, the guns have stopped firing all-together.

There is silence for the first time in six long years.

A bird begins to sing bravely, and Flora falls to her knees, a piece of shrapnel gashing the toughened skin into a wide, gaping mouth. Somewhere inside, she knows it – the war is over, and life can begin again.

* * *

It takes two days and two nights for the army to find her, lying among the brambles and bullets like a doll tossed down by an angry child. When she fell, she didn't have the energy to get up again.

They see the faint Red Cross on her sleeve, almost worn into oblivion by the passing of hard months, and the congealed blood on her dress. "What's a nurse doing out here?" they ask each other as two men lift her onto a stretcher and begin to carry her. She stares into nothingness. The war is over. Is he dead or alive? The war is over. Dead? Alive?

In the hospital, another nurse with a kind face cleans her knee, and helps her to drink a little bit of water. In the other tents, influenza is raging, so she is given a vaccine and left to court the sleep that continually evades her. Somewhere, her family from the life before rejoice at the end of the war. Somewhere, he is either living, or lying dead in the wilderness.

The not-knowing is driving her mad.

* * *

Day after day passes since the end. There is no sign of him, and eventually Flora gets up. She doesn't speak, she _can't _speak. Whenever she tries, the words coagulate on her tongue and refuse to move, so she gives up altogether.

One of the nurses writes to her mother, and she comes swooping down like the north wind, pulling Flora into a tight hug, but the furs and silks feel strange against Flora's cheeks, and the most she can do is woodenly return the embrace and why can't she be the person she was before the war? Her mother tries to take her away, but she refuses to go, pleading with her eyes. _I have to stay, to wait for him. I have to. _

A year goes by, and England is slowly pieced back together. Her aunt's family move back into Penshurst, and Flora goes with them, leaving her mother and father to their joyful society in London. When the roses are flowering again in the garden, Flora takes it upon herself to tend to them as carefully as if they were her children. To start with, her aunt is worried about the lack of speech, but her uncle puts a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, dear. She's been through an ordeal. She'll speak in her own time."

She spends hours out in the garden that summer, tending the flowers, putting the words she knows she can't say into their petals that bloom and then fall, bloom and then fall. And then, the miraculous happens.

She's sitting on the grass with her striped cotton dress pooled around her, carefully planting sweet peas in a row. A carpenter bee buzzes idly past her face, and the gardeners that returned with the victory are elsewhere in the ornamental gardens, planting flowers in the shape of a Union Jack to remind everyone that the British won. There is a clip-clop of shoes on the stone steps, the rustle of grass parting below a skirt.

"Miss Flora?" The maid's voice is nervous. "There's a man waiting for you in the parlour."

Flora turns her head, letting strands of auburn hair fall from the knot she's twisted it into at the nape of her neck. The maid shifts from one foot to another, like a magpie in her black and white uniform.

More footsteps, and someone else appears behind the maid at the top of the steps, a man dressed in a smart fawn-coloured suit. Gone are the khaki uniforms of the war, the buttons shining on shoulders and cuffs and for a second, she almost doesn't recognise him.

Then it hits her. Tears pool in her eyes and she slowly gets to her feet, stumblingly, like a new-born fawn.

Once, in a book, she read that human souls are split in two and that a person is only complete when they have found their other half. She takes an unsteady step towards him, and another and another, and then she's running, up the steps and into his waiting arms and finally, _finally_ her soul is entire, whole, finished.

The sun's rays shine incandescently down on them, and his fingers brush the tears from her cheeks. "I knew I'd find you," he says, kissing her over and over again. "I knew I would."

And for the first time in over a year, Flora Marshall smiles and smiles until it feels as though her cheeks have split. "I know."

* * *

**FIN. **


End file.
